Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy
By: Jacques Poitras
Published: October 19, 2007
ISBN 9780864924971
Format: Hardcover 317pp
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Take a manipulative and wealthy press baron, add a dysfunctional family, stir in some priceless art work, and blend with a stunning court case, and you have the recipe for the powerful book Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy by Jacques Poitras. In the author's capable hands, the life of the powerful Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook and his bungled attempt to create an art gallery in New Brunswick, Canada, becomes a drama that reads like a novel.
Jacques Poitras has researched the ongoing Beaverbrook family history, and its decline, in detail. The establishment of Max Aitken, better known as Lord Beaverbrook, as a builder of fortunes both in wealth and in political influence, is an important saga in its own right. The author goes well beyond the building of the Beaverbrook empire to encompass its decline and eventual fall from grace. The book's central theme, of Beaverbrook's mishandled project of building an art gallery to house his personal selections of fine art, is described in terms that rival a theatrical tragedy.
Author Jacques Poitras (photo left)
Lord Beaverbrook is described as a powerful man, receiving deference and awe from everyone in the Province of New Brunswick. From politicians and the Premier to the leading business people of the Province, Beaverbrook was held a heroic figure with his own select group of courtiers. That influence has almost disappeared, as the people of New Brunswick shed their colonial deference, at least as far as it concerned the Beaverbrook family. The court case over the ownership of valuable paintings, especially concerning J.M.W. Turner's The Fountain of Indolence and Lucian Freud's Hotel Bedroom, saw the general public siding with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery against the remaining Aitken family members.
For me, the power of the book is its masterful storytelling, that blends together larger than life characters, an ownership court dispute over fine art, and the disastrous manipulation and control displayed by Beaverbrook himself. The author's ability to uncover the tragic consequences of Beaverbrook's fatal personality flaws, that led to the disputes ownership of the paintings, makes history and current events come to life. The people involved are real, with both good and bad qualities, that makes the drama human, with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery a microcosm of life.
I highly recommend Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy by Jacques Poitras to anyone interested in history, or in the importance of proper documentation for charitable donations and loans. The story is a cautionary tale for non-profit organizations and charities, as well as for their patrons, about the crucial importance of good records.
Read Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy by Jacques Poitras, and discover how even the wealthy and powerful are subject to mistakes that have far reaching consequences, far beyond their original intentions.
